Madam Speaker, if ever there was a better example of government doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons in employment equity, I do not know of it. If ever there was an example of government making a bad decision worse in its attempt to make it better, I do not know of one.
Today in our universities students who take economics classes study the example of rent control, for instance, to learn how government can make a problem worse by adding what appears to be simple tools to make it better. With rent control government tried to make housing more affordable by imposing rent increase restrictions on those nasty landlords that, in government's opinion, wanted to take the shirts off the backs of their tenants. Unfortunately, as history and economics have shown again and again, it simply does not work.
Instead of rent control creating more affordable housing it creates less. By imposing rent restrictions the government takes the incentive away from developers to build new homes, thus limiting the number of homes on the market and ensuring that the under class never gets affordable housing.
Are there no benefits from rent control? Sure there are. The wealthy and the upper middle class people who have secured an apartment are guaranteed artificially low prices for their homes. Who benefits? The middle and upper classes. Who pays? Business and lower classes. It is a prime example of what happens when government creates a system to help one sector of society at the expense of another. It does not work. The market takes over and makes its own decisions that more often than not fly in the face of the good intentions of government.
I am convinced that a couple of decades from now students studying economics will no longer be examining rent control examples. They will be studying employment equity because employment equity as well as being fundamentally unjust, fundamentally unfair and fundamentally discriminatory, does not work. That is what the classes will be centred on.
Some will benefit: principally lawyers, the middle class minorities and women who are artificially moved ahead in the market by employment equity. But not the lower classes, not immigrants, not those the program is supposed to help. By placing artificial restrictions on hiring practices, by placing quotas on institutions that hire people, government limits the productivity of those organizations. Government makes them less productive and less productive organizations hire less people and fire more.
The first to be let go will always be those with the fewest skills, those who have spent the least time in the market or part time workers. Those people are disproportionately members of the very group that employment equity is supposed to benefit.
It is a classic example of government not working. It is a classic lesson for government. However this government, like its ideological cousins in the NDP, do not get it. It has been too blinded by rhetoric to understand reality and too influenced by special interests.
Employment equity is a failure. It does not do what it is intended to do. While attempting through employment equity to cure some alleged wrongs of the past, as a society we have sold our souls. We have made a pact with the devil. We have abandoned the principles of fairness, justice and equality.
Liberals used to love George Orwell's Animal Farm . They would cite the slogan: All are created equal but some are more equal than others'' with a bit of glee, thinking this was a criticism of the politics of the so-called establishment and that they were above such satire. Well, no more. Employment equity is the embodiment of the slogan:All are equal but some are more equal than others''.
That slogan does not make sense of course. It is illogical and so is employment equity. However it does not stop special interests from demanding more employment equity. I say special interests because there is no question that special interests are at work in the debate. When there is no empirical evidence of a white male cabal actively discriminating against more than half of the population and when the majority of Canadians oppose employment equity, what can we conclude except that special interests once again have the ear of the party across the way? Only special interests could force the promotion of a policy that is so illogical and so unfair.
The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is fond of citing statistics, with which we agree, saying that immigrants to Canada outperform native born Canadians in the workforce. The minister attempts to take credit for the fact that immigrants tend to be very hard working and self-reliant.
At the same time employment equity in the public service discriminates against men and white Canadians and discriminates in favour of minorities, many of whom are immigrants. Even though immigrants are outperforming native born Canadians, native born Canadians are punished by employment equity because immigrants are presumed to be disadvantaged.
No other bit of data shows the absolute folly of employment equity like the data on performance of immigrants. Look at the performance in the economy of recently arrived immigrants from Asia. These immigrants are new to the country. They often face difficulties with language. They are typecast as ethnic minorities. Yet they do better than the white males that are alleged to be discriminating against them and thereby are allowed to receive an undue and unfair benefit from employ-
ment equity programs. Does this make sense? Is this justifiable by anyone with a grain of common sense? Of course not.
Special interests are tickled about the state of affairs because special interests do not care about justice. They do not care about facts. They do not care about the national interest. They care only about their interests and they have the ear of the government.
The Reform Party has faced labelling. It has had to shield itself against rhetorical attacks unlike any ever faced by a major political party in Canada. Among those attacks have been the cry of racism, despite the fact that the Reform Party is the only party that has on its books a totally colour blind immigration policy.
We want Canada to accept immigrants on the basis of their ability to contribute to Canada and fill needs in the workforce. Imagine what would happen if the Reform Party changed that colour blind immigration policy. Imagine if ethnic fairness was our goal. Here is what would happen. The majority of immigrants coming to Canada are typecast as visible minorities. Using the logic of fans of employment equity that could only mean that there is a systematic institutional discrimination against non-visible minorities in the immigration system.
Again using the illogic of the employment equity program it would be fair, proper and just to establish quotas for immigration to Canada of more white Europeans. Imagine the backlash that would occur if that program were instituted, despite the fact that this hypothetical scenario would be based entirely on the exact same logic that the proponents of employment equity use.
Discrimination occurs in many quarters. It occurs against young men who have good grades but still cannot get into university or get a scholarship. It occurs in increased ethnic and racial awareness as government forces everyone to declare themselves a member of a racial group instead of just being Canadian. It occurs when there is job loss due to ridiculous demands placed on industries that do business with the government. It occurs as the stigma attached to minorities and women who are called "EE hires". The list goes on.
I urge the members of the House to think carefully. Do not toe the party line. Use your heads and think about the effect of this misguided policy. Think about the human costs. Think about the non-existent benefits. Then support our motion. Restore fairness, and stop discrimination of all kinds.